October 27, 2009

Kozinski Escaping Discipline Over Smut

The U.S. Judicial Conference dismissed an appeal by a former top judiciary staffer, in which Kozinski was accused of allegedly breaking federal law when he disabled the court’s Internet monitoring systems back in 2001. The staffer, Ralph Mecham, alleged that former Chief Justice William Rehnquist took a dim view of Kozinski’s actions and said that Kozinski should watch his porn at home.

But the conference found that Mecham’s allegations had been previously examined, and found not worthy of a judicial misconduct finding. And Meecham, the former executive director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, waited too long to file a formal complaint. At the time the chief justice himself didn’t ask for a formal misconduct investigation, and now many of the percipient witnesses — including Rehnquist — have died.

“A full and fair investigation into this aspect of the matter is not possible,” the conference ruled, upholding a decision from the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which heard the disciplinary case instead of the Ninth Circuit.

The Third Circuit has already wrung an apology out of Kozinski for making, if not porn, then NSFW images of a tacky and sexual nature, publicly available on a personal web site. Kozinski said he didn’t mean it to be accessible for everyone.